A couple of weeks ago, I made a note here of my stepping onto the decaffeinated wagon in an attempt to prepare myself for the sleepless nights of fatherhood. That bout of abstinence began shortly after Thanksgiving. Besides the caffeine-free wagon, I have also been riding the alcohol-free wagon for about six weeks now, alsoContinue reading “Better Living Through Chemistry, Part Deux: Aristotle on Drunkenness”
Category Archives: Philosophy
A Beating, Dimly Glimpsed, Poorly Understood
Many years ago, I saw a terrible beating and didn’t realize I was looking at one. Till much later. No experience is unmediated; without membership in a linguistic community, without a background theory, there is no immediate experience to speak of. There is no ‘given’; to ‘experience’ is to know how to deploy a certainContinue reading “A Beating, Dimly Glimpsed, Poorly Understood”
David Runciman is a Little Confused About the Power of Confusion
In reviewing Ferdinand Mount‘s The New Few, or a Very British Oligarchy: Power and Inequality in Britain Now (‘Confusion is Power‘, London Review of Books, Volume 34, Number 11, 7 June 2012), David Runciman writes: James Burnham, author of the The Managerial Revolution (1941) envisaged a post-democratic order in which power was concentrated in the hands of an eliteContinue reading “David Runciman is a Little Confused About the Power of Confusion”
The Emperor Has No Clothes Ritual
In ‘Expect to be Lied to in Japan‘ (New York Review of Books, 8 November 2012), Ian Buruma writes: I decided to go on a little trip to Matsushima this summer because I had never seen this particular “Great View,” even though I had in fact been there once before, in 1975. Then, too, IContinue reading “The Emperor Has No Clothes Ritual”
Gun Control, Propaganda, and the Susceptibility of Man to ‘Unreason’
In An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), William Godwin wrote: Show me in the clearest and most unambiguous manner that a certain mode of proceeding is most reasonable in itself, or most conducive to my interest, and I shall infallibly pursue that mode, so long as the views you suggested to me, continue present toContinue reading “Gun Control, Propaganda, and the Susceptibility of Man to ‘Unreason’”
Carmen Ortiz Did Not Act Alone in Hounding Aaron Swartz To His Death
No prosecution of war criminals, torturers and mass murderers; no prosecution of those that declare a war on false pretense; no prosecution of those that indulge in grand larceny and financial fraud, immiserating the lives of many; no prosecuting of the rich and the powerful; but over-zealous hounding of a young, idealistic, brilliant man whose onlyContinue reading “Carmen Ortiz Did Not Act Alone in Hounding Aaron Swartz To His Death”
William James on the Selectivity of Consciousness According to Human Interests
A couple of days ago, I noted humanism‘s affinities with pragmatism, and quoted William James to cement that claim. Today, I want to point to James’ treatment of consciousness to show how fundamental human interests are in his philosophy of mind. (This post is cribbed from Patrick Kiaran Dooley‘s Pragmatism as Humanism: The Philosophy of Willam James,Continue reading “William James on the Selectivity of Consciousness According to Human Interests”
No Matter Where You Go, There’s Home: Robert Viscusi’s Astoria
This morning, while out for a errand-laden walk–visiting the pediatrician’s office, shopping, and getting an influenza vaccine shot–in this bizarrely gorgeous East Coast January weather, I ran into my friend and Brooklyn College colleague, the poet Robert Viscusi, with whom I work at the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities. I admire Bob for his erudition, wit,Continue reading “No Matter Where You Go, There’s Home: Robert Viscusi’s Astoria”
Beware the Easily Defined Philosophical Term
Over the course of my philosophy career, I’ve come to realize I sometimes use technical philosophical terms without an exceedingly determinate conception of their precise meaning. But I do, however, know how to use them in a particular philosophical context that will make sense to an interlocutor–reader, discussant, student–who has a background similar to mine.Continue reading “Beware the Easily Defined Philosophical Term”
The Deadliness of Humorlessness
In the climactic scenes of Umberto Eco‘s The Name of the Rose, Adso of Melk and William of Baskerville confront the old, blind, and malignant librarian Jorge, sworn, no matter the price to be paid in lives, to keeping Aristotle‘s Poetics a perennial secret because of its subversive doctrines that not only analyze and permit laughter,Continue reading “The Deadliness of Humorlessness”
Samir Chopra 